


glass arrows

by snugglepup



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Archery, Dream Bubbles, F/M, Meowrails, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-03
Updated: 2014-07-03
Packaged: 2018-02-07 08:45:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1892631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snugglepup/pseuds/snugglepup
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Then you see your hive in the distance, tilted just as it used to be, and somehow it makes the you think of the Game more than anything else. This is the moment when a particularly massive and mutated cyclops peers over a not so distant cliff and wanders in your direction. When it sees you it roars and you're preparing yourself to be STRONG, stronger than you were when... and then suddenly you feel... strange. It takes a second to realize that of your three strife specibi, one is missing: now you see only Fistkind and Bowkind, ½Bowkind nowhere to be found.</p><p>You pull a bow from your specibus, already knowing what's going to happen and trying it anyway. Addiction is a powerful thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	glass arrows

_underneath the surface, none of us deserve this_

_underneath the surface, we break apart_

_disappeared from public places, never seen again_

_how long has it been? how long has it been?_

_circa survive - glass arrows_

* * *

 

It hurts. That's most of what you can think of, this maddening pain, so much worse than your pierced leg: the strings around your throat cutting into your skin, crushing your windpipe as you struggle utterly in vain to breathe. It hurts _so much_ and you cannot believe that you're going to die here and now because you don't know how to defy the wishes of a higher-blooded troll. Bright black stars bloom in your eyes as they bulge and you continue to _kneel_ and the clown's face is something out of the worst conceivable daymere, not just enraged but _evil_ , pupils twitching and wrongly colored as if he's somehow possessed, sick laughter pouring out from a screaming, distorted mouth filled with fangs that are much, much too large.

The distance between feeling that you're dying and actually dying is a lot shorter than you thought it would be, and when it's clear that this is where your story ends, you manage dimly through a weakening convulsive haze to fire one last cohesive thought through the last parts of your brain that are still alive.

You have been killed, but Nepeta is all right, which is really all that matters, and that thought is the reason that Equius Zahhak is able to die with a smile on his face, gruesome as it might be.

 

**...**

**...**

**...**

* * *

 

The funny thing is that you're less surprised to find that you're conscious for some reason and more surprised that you can breathe, although it feels... different in a way you can't explain. Something that's halfway between sand and dirt crunches against your back when you struggle to sit up; the sensation is not new. It's dark, but not too dark to see, and the blue wastes that surround you are more familiar than the sharp points and edges of what remains of your right horn.

But it makes no sense. None of this does. You remember dying so clearly that you shudder and have to think of something else to avoid a strange and unbearable feeling inside... inside every part of your body, really. The point is that you should be dead, and LOCAS was destroyed a long time ago. But no answers conveniently supply themselves and all you can do is wander the area, which you do. There are no imps here, there is no grist to collect; the silence of the few caves you explore is utterly deafening. You never would have dreamed that even a land half named for a lack of sound could be so quiet.

Then you see your hive in the distance, tilted just as it used to be, and somehow it makes the you think of the Game more than anything else. This is the moment when a particularly massive and mutated cyclops peers over a not so distant cliff and wanders in your direction. When it sees you it _roars_ and you're preparing yourself to be STRONG, stronger than you were when... and then suddenly you feel... strange. It takes a second to realize that of your three strife specibi, one is missing: now you see only Fistkind and Bowkind, ½Bowkind nowhere to be found.

You pull a bow from your specibus, already knowing what's going to happen and trying it anyway. Addiction is a powerful thing.

Except this bow is different from any other you've ever seen, and you have no idea what it's doing in your specibus. Whatever metal it's made of has strength but also somehow the give to function properly, and its dark material catches the weak light of your planet to shift with blue and green iridescence.

For the first time in your life, or maybe existence, seeing as you should be dead, an arrow leaves your bow and your weapon remains unbroken. It's only after you release the string that you realize you didn't actually have an arrow nocked, but what flies in an unnervingly perfect arc is a narrow shaft of pure blackness and when it meets the cyclops's eye it does not pierce or even explode but instead _implodes_ , wrenching at game-construct flesh and pulling it inward toward a tiny point of darkness. When this is over, a process that probably takes about three seconds, the headless corpse of the cyclops teeters and falls to ground that trembles with the impact.

Your name is Equius Zahhak. You are the Heir of Void, you are fairly sure that you're dead, and you have just fired your first arrow, your aim true, your power as devastating as it was confusing. If the Empire still existed, you might have had a shot at joining the Archeradicators after all.

 

* * *

 

Time passes and you don't know how much; here on LOCAS the deep twilight never changes and for some reason no timekeeping devices will function, leaving you with only your own mind for estimates. You think that maybe you've been here for a week, but it could be as much as a perigee or as little as two or three nights.

It's clear now that you can't possibly be alive, because you notice things about yourself and the world around you. You can breathe, but you don't _need_ to, you can eat and drink but you never hunger or thirst. And as for the world, it soon becomes clear that it is... malleable. Scenes from your life are hidden everywhere and sometimes suddenly overtake the location you actually occupy. It seems that this place runs not on logic, but on something akin to memory.

There are ways to alleviate the boredom of your endless wait for... something, for nothing, for anything. You build robots or sometimes just will them into being and you destroy them methodically, brutally, although there isn't much pleasure left in it any more. It seems that you've lost much of your inclination towards rage.

You call up objects to serve as targets and place them at varying ranges, some of which are so far from you that it's genuinely stupid, and practice with this strange bow. Every pull and release launches another streak of void, but unlike that first perfect shot, you discover that unless you will these 'arrows' to reach their marks, you are in fact a spectacularly terrible archer.

At least, you're a terrible archer at first. More practice than you can measure changes that, slowly but surely, and eventually you don't need to force the world to accept perfect shots any more because now they come naturally. You still don't know where the bow came from, although you have theories, and in the light of your hive it gleams like the shell of a beetle, stunning swirls of what you can't deny are olive and indigo. Examining the weapon's card in your strife deck reveals that its name is DIMIDIUM ANIMAE MEAE, and when you manage to recall some of the troll latin you haven't needed in, well, ever, you find yourself doing something that doesn't strike you as STRONG at all and leaves stains on your cheeks that have to be wiped off and are harder to stop than sweat.

Sometimes you try to warp this world you're trapped in so that there are others in it, particularly one other, but it seems that the afterlife is not, in fact, so kind as to allow you anything but solitude. This seems reasonable, and you think that probably your failures have landed you somewhere in between punishment and reward, if those things do in fact exist beyond death. Memory takes you to many places: chunks of Alternia, your hive before the Game, the meteor and its laboratories. Many times you consider trying to reach the Land of Little Cubes and Tea and cannot make yourself, because you know that it will be devoid of other sentient beings just like everywhere else, and you don't know how to handle what that might do to you.

For a while you decide to try to go insane, so you build bots of your friends. Aradia who you wronged terribly, Karkat who you never gave the respect he deserved as a leader, Vriska who you knew very well even if you didn't trust her. You sit around a table with their lifeless forms and see if pretending they're real long enough will convince you, bring on madness and put an end to this interminable loneliness, and when it doesn't and you just feel like an idiot having some sort of creepy tea party with fake trolls you destroy them all without the slightest bit of satisfaction.

The Nepetabot, that one you don't destroy, because you simply don't have the heart to do it. It sits tucked away in a corner of your hive that you rarely visit; you tried leaving it in obvious places, even in your respiteblock, and eventually became tired of the pains in your chest and vulgar displays of emotion that the mere sight of it brings on.

Time. What is time to you now? It's absolutely nothing. You explore caves without purpose, conjure all manner of strange and often idiotic things, pointlessly keep your skill with that beautiful bow, and wonder how long you've been here, whether you'll be here forever. Probably you will, and by now there can be no more estimates. Has it been weeks, perigees, _sweeps_? There's no way to tell and no reason to care. It seems only natural for the Heir of Void to spend eternity alone. At least you made certain she was safe, before you died. At least you could do that much good.

 

* * *

 

You're lying on your back staring at the emptiness above when you see it. There's a tiny web of white lines high, high above you, like cracks in a pane of glass. It only takes you a minute or two to feel deep in your gut that, whatever it means, there's only one course of action that makes sense. The bow almost seems to crackle in your hands, coursing with a weird electric buzz that threatens to turn your fingers numb.

When you release the arrow it isn't black this time. Instead you see a line of brilliant light, blue and green and shining with something entirely unlike anything else you've ever seen. The 'arrow' lodges itself in those lines that might be cracks, sizzles for a second, and then dissolves into countless motes of light. You stare at the sky, willing it to change, willing it to open, and nothing happens.

It takes a total of four hundred and thirteen desperate, stupid, meticulously and pointlessly counted shots, all of them the same blazing rays of light, to crack the sky with a sound exactly like shattering glass, and before you can begin to wonder what it means, something knocks you to the ground and only a certain old instinct keeps you from attacking.

"Oh my _god_ it's been _furever!_ No one could figure out a way into your bubble and I kept clawing and clawing and there were these flashes of light where I was scraping, sometimes, and..." She buries her face in your shoulder and starts to cry, little hitching sobs as she nuzzles against you, and it breaks your heart, the glimpse of blank white eyes just like yours that you managed to see before she moved her head.

Your moirail is dead. Something went wrong and you'll hate for it, rage at it, find a way to ruin whoever or whatever is responsible, no matter how impossible. You should be devastated, you should be angry, in some ways you are.

But here, now, what matters is the weight of her pressing down on you, the warmth of her body, the life that's real and present even if the two of you left 'real' life behind.

You wrap your arms around her slowly, carefully, doing everything you can to mind your strength, and you shut your eyes and simply _feel._

 

* * *

 

When you finally see Gamzee Makara again he stands between your friends and the place where his grotesque master awaits a climax with the childish drama befitting his role. There are a lot of people ready to save the multiverse who can't afford any more delays, and more importantly than anything else, _the clown is still alive._

"Leave us," you say as several aliens and a number of trolls look to you in confusion. A third body splits from the larger group to stand with you and your moirail. "Your battle is not with this... _creature."_

"I will catch up soon!", the tealblood says, voice odd, hate mixing with her constant mania. "There's clown hunting to do, and that takes priority over anything else." As the crowd rushes beyond and the monster retrieves a pair of vicious clubs from his specibus, Terezi Pyrope's sword slides free of its cane sheath and Nepeta Leijon's claws extend from her gloves, metal blades shifting indigo and olive.

Your name is Equius Zahhak. You are the Heir of Void, and in death you finally understand the meaning of your life. The string of your bow is pulled taut, and you know that you will not miss.

 _"Kneel,"_ you command, and let your arrow fly.


End file.
